Daily Gospel Reflection: Feast of Saint John, Apostle and evangelist
December 27, 2023
Feast of Saint John, Apostle and evangelist
Gospel: Jn 20:1a and 2-8
On the first day of the week,
Mary Magdalene ran and went to Simon Peter
and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them,
"They have taken the Lord from the tomb,
and we do not know where they put him."
So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb.
They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter
and arrived at the tomb first;
he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in.
When Simon Peter arrived after him,
he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there,
and the cloth that had covered his head,
not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place.
Then the other disciple also went in,
the one who had arrived at the tomb first,
and he saw and believed.
*United States Conference of Catholic
Bishop Robert Barron
Friends, on this feast of St. John, our Gospel tells of his coming to faith in the Resurrection when he saw the empty tomb.
From this grave of Jesus, we learn that everything we took to be the case is not the case; that what always moved this way now moves that way.
God has shown us his power over death in the most unambiguous way; our lives should not be dominated by the fear of death, and we see the proof of this in the most vivid way imaginable.
Some people think that they will make the Resurrection more intelligible or more acceptable to modern people if they allegorize it away, turning it into a vague symbol of the perdurance of Jesus’ cause. But then his grave would be, like the grave of any ordinary hero, sad, wistful, reassuring.
Notice please that no cult of Jesus’ tomb ever developed in Christianity; we don’t look back with easy wistfulness. Rather, we allow ourselves to be surprised, turned upside down by it.
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